I recent­ly watched the fed­er­al trea­sur­er, Scott Mor­ri­son, proud­ly pro­claim that Aus­tralia was in “sur­pris­ing­ly good shape”. Indeed, Aus­tralia has just snatched the world record from the Nether­lands, achiev­ing its 104th quar­ter of growth with­out a reces­sion, mak­ing this achieve­ment the longest streak for any OECD coun­try since 1970.

Aus­tralian GDP growth has been trend­ing down for over forty years
Source: Trad­ing Eco­nom­ics, ABS

I was pret­ty shocked at the com­pla­cen­cy, because after twen­ty six years of eco­nom­ic expan­sion, the coun­try has very lit­tle to show for it.

I’ve been work­ing on the sec­ond edi­tion of Debunk­ing Eco­nom­ics for the last three months, and I’m now flat out try­ing to fin­ish the first draft by the end of March—hence the pauci­ty of posts recent­ly. How­ev­er the lat­est Aus­tralian GDP fig­ures came out this week, and this has enabled me to update the Cred­it Impulse data for Aus­tralia, which has impli­ca­tions for both employ­ment and asset prices—and espe­cial­ly house prices.

Video overview

Debunking Economics II

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